Communication network overhead information, such as route cost updates, message acknowledgements, congestion control notifications, and other network statistics and management information are transmitted between network nodes in a communication network to facilitate network traffic management. However, such transmission of network overhead information expends network bandwidth that could otherwise be used to send actual data and other mission critical data payloads.
Presently, the bandwidth of communication networks are over-provisioned to provide room for the transmission of network overhead information. Various strategies and algorithms have also been developed in attempts to decrease bandwidth consumption by the transmission of network overhead information required to facilitate network traffic management. The problem remains, however, that present techniques for exchange of network overhead information require network bandwidth that could be used to send actual data and other mission critical data payloads through the communication network.